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| super cyclist in action |
This morning we cycled north as far as Scawby and then turned west over the A15 towards Messingham, before heading home through Kirton Lindsey and Redbourne. A round trip of about 40 kms. On the outskirts of Redbourne I noticed an unusual crop in the fields – pale lilac poppies! There must be a lot of opium dens in Lincolnshire! Apparently they are grown for the pharmaceutical industry to make morphine. I had never seen them grown as a crop like this before.
Of course I couldn’t resist a photo opportunity (I always used to make my young daughters pose in sunflower fields in France). It didn’t really work, it looks like I’m crouching down having a wee!
I will leave you will some photos of poppies in my garden.
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| red poppy |
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| mauve poppy |
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| furry puppy |
That dog is just adorable - does he run alongside when you cycle or does he stay at home? Interesting about the poppies, mauve ones have seeded all over mu garden - no idea where they have come from.
ReplyDeleteRick stays at home on guard duty; he would try and chase every bicycle and car in sight.
DeleteGrown under licence for medicinal purposes. You cycled a long way today.
ReplyDeleteMy knee is aching tonight. I've ordered some Voltarol gel.
Deletepoppy, puppy....cute either way. ;)
ReplyDeleteIrresistible.
Delete"Poppy fields" always make me think of The Wizard of Oz.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't see any yellow brick roads.
DeleteI expect there are a few lofts around you, where other drugs are grown. I believe it's very lucrative.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it's a worldwide 'industry'.
DeleteWe had the experience of opium poppies 'self' seeding in our garden. Of course it wasn't self seeded. People who want to harvest them for homemade opium pick a well tended garden and hope the gardener will nurture them on. The garden got thoroughly trashed by people coming in and pulling them all up one night. Lesson learned the hard way.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandfather spent ages one year nurturing a beautiful plant he found coming up in his garden, and was proudly showing it off to his policeman friend some weeks later when it was nearly 6 feet tall, only to have Ray tell him it was marijuana. We laughed on that for years. (Apparently it is really good for keeping the white butterflies off the cabbages.)
Your grandfather won't be the first person to innocently nurture marijuana, it is quite a pretty plant.
DeleteThe furry one is beautiful - every garden should have one!
ReplyDeletePoppies are a favourite flower, and I'd love red ones to grow in my garden. The last time I tried, we had gardener who gave everything a liberal dosing of a weed killer he assured us would only kill the weeds. How wrong he was!
I'm not sure where ours have come from, I don't remember any in the garden last year.
DeleteI hope you didn't get high on the poppies Sue. Crouching in a field like that is known as wild weeing.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't the best of poses!
DeleteMy Mom had what she jokingly(?) called opium poppies in her garden for years. They looked different than the large flat petaled poppies in your picture. They were flowers, just slightly smaller across than the ones in the pics above, but the petals were similar to carnation flowers in that they looked shredded and were deep pinkish red. The plant leaves, and seed heads were definitely poppies. Every year Mom saved the seeds that we shook out of the seed pods. She planted them each year, and also shared them with neighbors to plant. Those poppies came from seeds from the poppies my grandmother grew, which originally came from my great grandma's garden. I never knew or heard of anybody in the family using opium. I am thinking that the seeds were probably the type that is sprinkled on baked goods.
ReplyDeleteWe've got a pink carnation-like poppy in our garden this year too. The petals are like you describe - shredded, but it's definitely a poppy.
DeleteI hate the poppies that self seed in our garden and pull them out! But we have the small red ones in our wild patch and they're lovely.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so keen on orange Californian poppies that appear everywhere.
Delete40km - I'm impressed. I've got back into cycling during this lockdown, but it's hilly round here and it has taken some time to get used to it. I'm managing 10 miles now though. It must be lovely in flat Lincolnshire - not far from where I'm originally fromw where everyone cycled everywhere. I've just treated myself to a bike "computer" to show speed and distance etc.
ReplyDeleteWe use a cycling app - Strava. It records our routes, speeds, distance etc so we can monitor our performance. It's nice when we see an improvement. We've only been in Lincolnshire for less than 2 years and I'm really enjoying the flat countryside although Paul wants to tackle the Wolds.
DeleteAh yes, but you need a smartphone for apps.
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